1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to document processing and, more particularly, to a system and method of using markup symbols to automatically identify and process selected areas of a document.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are many conventional means of identifying specialized text zones that involve the use of form recognition software. These means rely on pre-defined forms. This technique requires the user to select, and/or to create a form prior to running the application. Obviously, this form recognition process is limited to the number of pre-defined forms. Further, the data must be submitted on one of the pre-defined forms. Other applications require the user to view the scanned image on a PC and perform some kind of drawing operation to identify document zones. This two-step process can be cumbersome.
Other convention solutions involve the application of bar-code labels, and/or the use separator sheets with meta-data.
It would be advantageous if areas of a form could directly be identified without an intervening user-driven action.
It would be advantageous if the identified document areas could be processed with an intervening step to correlate processes to identified areas.